An orange in an apple orchard
Terry Poulin Shared from Google Reader
IT Snake Oil, Six Tech Cure-Alls That Went Bunk—Slashdot
As fascinating as it can be, I’m sorry to say that calling AI IT snake oil might be a very fair statement to make…. lol.
The referenced articles on /. are well worth the parse in this case.
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Microsoft Links Malware Rates To Pirated Windows—Slashdot
I’ll believe this when Microsoft releases all versions of Windows as Open Source under the GPL, and only makes a profit by selling support contracts—fat chance of that happenin’ and you can bank on it.
In the past near-decade of using Windows based computers, the machines in my care probably have one of the lowest infections, compared toanyone I know, who is an “Average, gullable, luser”. Do stupid things and your box is trashed, it won’t make a difference whether or not you paid for it.
Hmm, if people are going to start blaming outdated pirated copies of windows for the spread of malicious software: how about Microsoft try ditching the pseudo-worthless WGA garbage and making the Windows and Native APIs more restrictive in what they can tamper with?
Oh yeah, just blame other people, real s.m.r.t. idea.
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Man accidentally ejects himself from plane—The Guardian World News
Oh man, this guy is never going to live that down! Sheesh, how stupid do you have to be not to know what’s going to happen if you yank the ejection rip-cord seated between your legs? Haha, that just sounds so wrong in of it self!
Here’s to narrowly evading the receipt of a Darwin Award, one lucky son of a bitch at a time !!
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Adobe engages Apple in passive aggressive warfare with iPhone’s Flash message—Engadget
Flash player, eat your heart out and die!
Slept in, since there was no need to get up before noon, I got out of bed around 1100—having originally woken up around 0800. I’ve yet to solve the sleep problem, but at least I am getting up earlier with much greater consistency, the down side is I don’t think I can sleep much longer then four or five hours at a time without waking up… beats the alternatives I guess.
I toyed around with my to do list program for the morning, as a way of passing time until it was time to leave; ma had to see a doctor to sort out some of the post-hospital stuff. So I spent most of my day sitting in a health clinics lobby, in the next county lol. After three or so hours of that was hiking around the supermarket while her perscriptions were being filled—so much for coding today.
Experiments in an SQLite3 based tasks manager are postponed, in favour of using Googles `Tasks` system that is mated to gmail and gcal. Until further notice, it looks like `gtasks` is m new todo management system; I’ll also take a look at RTM later tonight, and try to evaluate if it’s worth while.
While I don’t particularly care for it, I think it’s time to re-evaluate iGoogle as a way of integrating a few more things into my work flow.
Personally, I don’t care much for being reliant on any company for my resource needs, I do however like good web applications, and Google Mail is exceptional! Docs, Cal, Groups, and Chat also makes things much easier. In point of fact, my preferred contact method is XMPP—which is the backend provider for Google Talk. Life would be so much cooler if the various major instant messenger systems (AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, ICQ) could integrate half as nicely as XMPP based solutions do.
I don’t need to use an Live mail account to email my friends, why should I need a Live ID to chat with them? Maybe Wave might change that someday.
database store {
table tags { /*
* Enumerates all tags in usage
*/
id name;
}
table tasks { /*
* Stores data for each todo with
* tags being a splitable string.
* Three date fields are used, marking
* when the item was set, completed, and
* a special 'mark' field, for things such
* as the do by then or piss off dilemma.
*/
id tags task date_set date_mark date_done
}
}
Just a simple structured annotation to the SQLite3 schemas that are in my brain at the moment.
Perhaps it would be more effective to encode the tags as a bitmask created from tags.id rows, mmm. The real question I suppose is can I actually insert the atribtrary data I want into an SQLite database and be able to query it without hitting any hard limits. Not that I’m likely to hit any there might be, lol.
Obviously it would need to offer a CRUD interface to some form of persistent storage, namely one that I can easily access anywhere; that makes the most idea solution a file in my home directory, or something accessible over the network.
It would have to support some notion of “Tagging“, every entry should be able to be tagged under multiple names and queried accordingly.
A list view comparable to the collapsible “Groups” in most instant messengering softwares buddy list, would be a perfect way to view tags, particular when combined with the ability to search todo’s by tag and other criteria: like date, title, and all other data.
While software oriented towards managing the software life cycle might be useful, I need something of a more general nature. The only real short coming of Google Tasks is that while it integrates into Mail and Calendar quite nicely, it unfortunately has no real concept of tagging. It’s more of a gimmick then a useful feature.
In all probability I could munge together some AWK scripts and an SQLite database to get exactly what I want, hahahahahahah! And maybe someday write a graphical front end. Hmm…
I’ve been very busy of late. By my own calculation, ma is now sucking an additional 2 1/2 hours or more out of every day of my life, just through lunch/dinner prep! Today she also decided it was time for redoing the kitchen and has managed to rattle my nerves accordingly to get what she wants. While I generally like an excuse to work with my hands, I don’t really care much for moving shelves around, along with all the junk on them, let along the priority interrupts that have to be fired later when I am “Done” but there’s still more odds and ends.
A distinguishing feature between me and the rest of my family, I do things myself, they can’t be arsed to do more then coerce someone into doing stuff for them.
The Encapsulated Package Installer (EPI) project was let out of the bag not to long ago, but in a good way; since it’s picked up steam again. In the past couple days I’ve started work on the build system, and filed off several memorandums while refining the standard.
Our build system is being designed with distributed functionality in mind, making it play nicely with jails and machines on a private subnet. The overview I sent in an earlier memo, described a build system so knock out dead dead sexy, it ought to be illegal!
One of the ideas I’ve been mulling over for a while, is ways we can improve the security model used in EPI; after much thought on the various methods, I’ve cooked up a scenario that would allow running the optional scripts without root privileges, while still expressing obtrusive functionality through the EPIL script API in ways that is “To eat your heart out, PBI”. I need to do a bit more study, but I like the idea.
Joy, dinner is ready and I’m not done writing this post yet, courtesy of her royal highnesses interruptions! Sigh, there’s just no way to win.
I managed to spend a portion of the day playing SWAT, maybe 5 or 6 missions worth. At this point in life, it’s one of the few pleasures I get beyond engineering software systems. Oy, there’s no peace to be found here :'(. In just about every action or endeavor, my mother manages to make me feel utterly miserable. It’s like a universal constant… for more years then I care to recall right now.
As far as efforts to consolidate my explosive todo list, I’ve been thinking about setting up some web software on Vectra, for triaging todo’s: the next best thing is Google integration with “Tasks” but I could use something a bit more dedicated. The best software that’s interested me, is one of the hosted apps on SourceForge, but sadly is not yet compatible with the database backend I’ve got to work with atm. Maybe later I’ll find some time to take a look at some webware. I can’t afford to take time to whip up one of my own, to busy cleaning todo’s off …. sigh
Man I gotta lay off the [SAS] dynamic room clearing. It’s like bam, bam, bam, bam bam bam – 2 story building with 30-40 contacts clear in the blink of an eye.
I feel like doing back flips, lol
I haven’t been keeping up with my journal lately, things have been hopping quite a lot recently.
Wednesday night, my mother had to be taken to the hospital. I spent the night on the couch, trying to keep the dogs sane; Willow & Coco have been bark happy! Thursday was basically spent on a mixture of travel, hospital, and chores. Got to spend some time with my brother after we visited our mother, I was there about three times during the day. Another night on the couch lol, and Coco doesn’t exactly like to *share* that much!!! For years my mothers thought that she may be diabetic, so finally being in a doctors care for, I guess the first time in 21 years; ma was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Friday saw the conclusion of testing, and it appears the main problem is Diverticulitis. Who would’ve thought having a high(er) fiber diet in your 30s and 40s was going to be important twenty to thirty years later? So far, things seem to be pretty good. Ma should be coming home tomorrow, eh today, or at the latest Sunday.
For what hours I haven’t been in a hospital room, I’ve basically been home with the dogs. I don’t mind being alone as much as I would’ve thought, but I am really glad to hear that ma is coming home soon. It’s too quite without her, and the dogs are not used to just having me around the house.
Two things that I have learned, is if I ever had to live alone, two fundamentally important things are a good radio (that gets 94.9) and gloves ^_^. Actually, I think this was the first time in my life, that I really had to wash dishes—I’m not about to have her come home to a kitchen full of crap. For some reason, without my mothers constant interruptions the day time has passed much slower then I’m accustomed to; so rather then quickly flying by days and slow nights, things are on a more natural pace. It will be nice to be able to sleep in my own bed again as well, rather then taking the nights on the couch. While Willow will hog my bed at night, Coco doesn’t care much and won’t often venture that far away from the living room, unless she wants to hide in my closet lol (oft’ during thunderstorms).
Getting a little drowsy now, and I should be getting to sleep, only GOD knows when the phone is going to start ringing in the morning. Heh, and actually that is an interesting thing that coems to mind now that I write this; although I’ve probably spent as much time on the phone in the past three days, then I have in the past three years. One thing I have noticed is that while ma has been in the hospital, there hasn’t been tons of calls from creditors all freaking day; there’s only been two or three at the most. Anything else would have to of come through when I was visiting at the hospital.
Spooky, ain’t it?